Papal Politics : At the Population Conference, the Pope is Playing Hard-ball on Abortion

U.S. citizens, who thought they knew how warm tempers can get when religion enters domestic politics, last week joined the world in feeling the heat of a religious explosion on the international political scene. Cairo provided the stage, as delegates from 160 nations took up the most fateful issues at century’s end: How many people can the globe sustain tomorrow, and how can nations develop resources to sustain them?

Leave it to the statisticians and economists, some thought, forgetting how much the clergy care about what happens in bedroom, clinic and granary. Discuss the topics in the flat language of U.N.-style intercultural diplomacy, thought others, neglecting to listen to the eloquence and passion of sacred texts on birth, on feeding the hungry. Call in the secular-interest groups to debate women’s rights, reasoned another set. They forgot how much religious traditionalists had to say on that subject, or how vigorously the prophetic women dissenters are on the move today.

The only religious voice at the U.N. table is Catholic, because its headquarters, the Vatican, is a state. The privilege of being at the table, resented by many other religions that had to speak from the margins, did not pacify Rome and lead it to quiet diplomacy. Its verbal violence was outdone only by threats of physical violence against the conference and conferees by minority Muslim extremists. But other Muslims shared Vatican opposition to any talk of abortion at Cairo. Some from several nations stayed home, while Muslim conservatives and the Vatican both claimed the Cairo program embodied U.S.-inspired Western imperialism. The Vatican stood virtually alone in totally opposing contraception, which is crucial to any plans for limiting population. Sadly, Cairo majorities complained, the 90% of the agenda that most could agree on went neglected.

An aftereffect of the conference will be a new sense of urgency to appraise the aggressive moves of leaders in surging and competitive religions. Islam may be the most complex case, but Rome, for now, provides the best foretaste. Are diplomats ready?

“The Pope! How many divisions has he got?”

Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s sneering question was supposed to put the Pope in his place, militarily and politically. Stalin is long gone, but the Pope is still here, more aggressive than ever in modern times. In fingering the United States and manhandling the drafters of Cairo documents, the Pope, who still has no military divisions, has shown genius at creating political ones. This season, the Vatican gives no quarter, would take no prisoners, offers no compromise and will not cease fire.

The U.S. delegation, headed by Vice President Al Gore, made efforts at compromise. Gore had strategic reasons for conciliation and showed a generosity of spirit not equaled by Rome. Headlines announcing his efforts made the United States look foolish. Whoever thought the Pope might listen to voices advocating contraception has not been hearing him.

The Vatican operation tests the rules of both the religious and the political games, without totally breaking either. The political rules, which call for conferees to seek consensus and not a mere majority--the Vatican summoned only a tiny minority--allowed Rome to obstruct the conference in its first days. Politics led the Pope to seek allies as far afield, some said, as Iran and Libya, not natural companions for Rome. It was legitimate on political grounds for him to build a coalition with Muslim nations opposing abortion, a position that is not a conservative Christian monopoly. The United States and others worked for compromise language. But on contraception it was all Vatican bluster, since not even largely Catholic nations backed Rome.

The Vatican was not alone in being political; so is the United States, so are all contenders within the political organization called the United Nations. There are no neutral parties when nations discuss the fate of the world, which is what they are doing at Cairo. More politics? Dissenting Catholics in the United States and elsewhere were vociferously political in opposing the Vatican. Other religious voices and many women’s movements were and had to be political. But the absolutism of the Vatican and the tactics it used, including misrepresenting and distorting the U.N. document, forebode negative aftereffects.

In the United States, which is one-fourth Catholic, on issues like contraception, the Pope has come to look like many a liberal Protestant leader did in the ‘60s: a general without an army. “Catholics continue to reject, by a margin (87% recently) of almost nine to one, the official teaching of the institutional church on birth control.” So wrote Catholic sociologist Andrew W. Greeley already nine years ago, using piles of survey data. In Mexico and Brazil, where nine of 10 citizens are Catholic, reports say about nine of 10 women of child-bearing age ignore or reject the official teaching.

The public, aware of the dismissal of the Vatican position by most of the Catholic faithful, may not judge the faithful to be right, but they can read a new political situation when they see one, and are aware of the new risks. The Pope, recognized as a moral voice when, with spiritual passion and eloquence, he expresses concern for the sacredness of the Earth, the dignity of the human and the stewardship of resources, now appears, more and more, not as the moral, intellectual and spiritual leader but as a no-holds-barred politician.

For John Paul II not to witness would be out of character, unpapal and, from the viewpoint of conscience, wrong. By now, however, on questions like contraception, the world knows him to be unconvincing--he sounds less like the moral voice crying in the wilderness than a street fighter. Has anyone heard any delegate saying, “The Pope is so compelling on the subject that I’ll rethink my position on abortion and birth control”? Instead, one hears them talking tactics and wanting to get on with most of the Cairo business.

Politics is not something negative: Argument serves the human city well. But politics, on the county board or in the United Nations, settles nothing about truth and is only an expression of power. Those who get the most votes, win. They have not proved that they have an absolute hold on the Absolute, while their enemies are demons. The official Vatican teaching on contraception may be right--not a Catholic, I join most Catholics in thinking it is not--but obstructionist tactics at the United Nations will not persuade anyone to rethink the issue. In Cairo, the Vatican and some Muslim opponents to language about the family or the rights of women were capable of stirring up debate where there could be give and take. But the Vatican monopolized the agenda on the issues where it would only give and never take, at the expense of other themes.

The most obvious intrusion by the Vatican into U.S. politics came with “divide and conquer” efforts. In August, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, speaking for Rome, tried this tactic. He attempted to create division in America by rejecting Gore’s initiatives and tried to portray the United States as an imperialist instigator and the villain of Cairo. In an astounding and unprecedented personal attack, Navarro-Valls attempted to separate “this Administration” from the American people, disdainfully attacking Gore by name.

The suggestion was that “this Administration” was out of step with the American majority--manifestly not true in the issue of contraception. On abortion, Washington is alert to the public’s ambiguity and confusion--only a small percentage is “pure pro-life,” and therefore seeking constitutional prohibition of all abortion, or “pure pro-choice,” and thus refusing to see any human-life issues in the abortion controversy.

Understandably, “this Administration” does not want to pick a fight with those in the Muslim minority who do agree with their militant leaders, or with those in the Catholic minority who might agree with “this Administration” in the Vatican. Yet, the U.S. government has to regard the Vatican attacks not as moral persuasion but mere politics--attempts by the Pope to wield power when he has been unable to get his own faithful to agree.

Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Protestants and other people of faith were not able to express their own passion for the sacredness of the Earth, the dignity of the human and the stewardship of resources. Many contend they are more committed to these than is the Pope. They show this in religious support for women’s rights and for measures that will help prevent suffering by limiting population and for sustainable development everywhere. It is sad, many would say, that the majority of the world’s religions were crowded off stage despite their positive programs.

All the religions and the religious have an obvious stake in the outcome in Cairo. The United Nations has a fresh interest in relating to the religious communities, having relearned how powerful are their voices, how necessary it is not to overlook them, how soulful they can be.

It is a pity, then, that the voice of this Pope, usually regarded as a moral influence even among those who disagree with him, in the ears of many came to be heard as the voice of Vatican power, a merely political being who threw Cairo off course. While pursuing its legitimate political ends, the Vatican employed questionable means. These distracted attention from most of what the United Nations is and has to be about when talk about population and resources becomes urgent--as it did in Cairo.